


Forty-Three Minutes, Twenty Seconds

by InterNutter



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Complete, F/M, Romance, Smut, healing relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-31
Updated: 2013-05-31
Packaged: 2017-12-13 12:52:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/824513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InterNutter/pseuds/InterNutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kira has been taken because of Odo's infatuation with her. He has limited time to find her. Can he save her? Will he find more than he has ever bargained for?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forty-Three Minutes, Twenty Seconds

Disclaimer: Paramount owns the characters and setting of the story. My own twisted mind provided the new sets, situations and story. They'd probably reject this if it was a script. Please send me money so I can afford a literary agent :)  
Credit given where credit's due; Carolyn originally thought of the "demon offworlder" thing [Hi there! :) ] and I thought - what the hell, it's a good plot device :)  
Disclaimer#2: This story was started before I saw _Second Skin_; so therefore I'm assuming that everything Kira said to the Cardassians in that ep. was a big fat fib :)

Forty-Three Minutes, Twenty Seconds

by InterNutter

Odo scowled at Major Kira's empty quarters. She hadn't been captured easily. All her furniture was overturned, her altar smashed. At least four phaser marks scored walls. _Significant signs of a struggle. Prophets, that's *her* blood..._ He scanned the area. Changeling DNA in association with the damage, not his, one of the Founders.  
The Founders had Nerys. Odo snarled just under his breath. There was a piece of paper lodged under a significant fragment of the shattered glass altar. Odo plucked it out. A note. They wanted to make their presence known.  
_Arrive alone at airlock five before 13:00 hours, or in Forty-three minutes and Twenty seconds, your Major will die a horrible death._  
There were four left minutes until 13:00 hours. That made it Forty-seven minutes, or less, now. What could happen to a humanoid in Forty-seven minutes? _A horrible death - in less than an hour. They mean it to linger. It takes seconds to suffocate..._ Odo mused even as he trod the path towards airlock five. If he wanted to hurry, he could cut through the still-unrepaired Dead Zones. His Changeling form would be unharmed by the sharp, torn metal, likewise the absence of heat...  
_Heat._ Realisation dawned. _A humanoid can die of hypothermia within that time limit, especially if they're wounded._ "MAJOR!" he called.

It was cold. Kira had encountered freezing cold before, in mountains and once, in a bare, rocky desert at night. Her blood had stopped flowing, thereby ceasing to warm even that small area. She wished she'd worn her long nightshirt, last night, instead of the short thing now stretched beyond repair around her bare thighs.  
It was dark. Dark and cold, the very image of her personal hell. Kira wished, not for the first time, that she hadn't fought when the imposter-Odo had told her she was going with him whether she liked it or not. Her broken hand throbbed where he'd squeezed it, just for trying to hit him when her phaser was crushed. Instinct had flared then, when she tried to kick a groin that wasn't there, and she'd broken her left shin.  
The fight had only gone downhill from there. Kira could no longer feel the bruised side of her face. She could hear the founder, begging her to cry out. Stuff him. She wasn't going to die begging to live.

Odo tore into the bulkhead. There, the medkid he'd stowed there as both bait and emergency necessity. Intact, thank the Prophets. "Major!" He roared, "I know you're here! Cry out, *please*! I need to find you!"  
Nothing, save his own echoing words.  
"Odo to Ops, I believe Major Kira's been thrown into the Dead Zones - follow my signal. I'll need a medical team, ASAP." Odo engulfed the kit, storing it Aside, with the rest of his total mass. "Major, *please*, call my name if you can hear me!"  
Again. Nothing.  
Odo consulted his tricorder, set it to scan for Bajoran lifesigns. Below, Twenty meters or more. In a cavernous place the maintenance techs that worked here called the Labyrinth. Odo let his body dissolve, pouring down as fast as he could to the Labyrinth level. From there it would take time to find her. Signals tended to bounce in the Labyrinth.  
He reformed into his customary Humanoid shape, and strode cautiously through the maze of various props, walls and integrity shields, following what he could read. "Major Kira!" He tried again, "Call out, Major! We don't have much time!"  
Again, nothing. Odo began to pray that she was still alive.

He was persistent, she had to give him that. But, if she hadn't - couldn't; moved, then why would he need to find her? Part of the pretense? Make her think it was the real Odo trying to find her? Kira winced as she tried to huddle a little more. Her fingers were numb, a blessing, since she couldn't feel them screaming pain as she cradled her shattered hand.  
Weeping was pointless, she was going to die, but Kira wept anyway.  
She could hear footsteps, coming inexorably closer. Kira closed her eyes and prayed that this time the bastard would just kill her.

It had been decades since he'd even bothered to pray aloud. The right words skittered away from his thoughts even as he fought to remember them. "Holy Prophets..." he murmured, "guide my feet - steps; in this... path. Help me find - find safe; my - friend. No." The Prophets wanted truth. That was the price of a successful prayer. You had to be completely honest. Aloud. "My love. Help me find the one I love; Major Kira Nerys."

_What the hell?_ Kira blinked muzzily. _I must be halucinating. Or something._ She could hear Odo, chanting High Bajoran, if haltingly, praying. For her safe return. _He loves me? This has to be that Founder..._  
Something in the tone of the voice caught her heart. Some indefinable inflection made her whimper, "Odo?" Then she wanted to bite her tongue.  
If a Founder wanted to imitate Odo, it could. It could imitate everything he did. It could even make up something to make her believe.

"...Odo?"  
He turned towards the sound. He was lucky to hear it, her voice was so soft. She must be in pain to allow her voice to squeak like that... The signals were stronger that way, too. He strode towards them. "Major, answer me; how bad are you hurt?" He shined his palm light about, trying to find a visible clue to work with the auditory one.  
She wasn't answering again. An eerie feeling crawled through his being.  
"Major - did the Founder that did this to you imitate me?"  
Nothing.  
"If he managed to fool you, then I can't convince you I am who I say I am. But *please*, you're going to *die* if I don't help you. Ask yourself - would a Founder *care*?"  
"How do I know it's you?" Whispered, almost croaked.  
Odo narrowed his search radius again. "I'm afraid I can't prove anything, Major." He told her, "Before you went missing, I - was attacked by the Founder. He - linked with me... I managed to force him off, but by the time I recovered--" He couldn't speak. Words failed. He'd failed. "I'm sorry this happened to you, Nerys."  
There. In an alcove, huddled against the chilling metal and clutching the last shreds of her nightshirt against her. He'd almost walked right by her. Odo exuded the medkit. Not caring that she saw him do it. "I know. You don't know if I'm me or that Founder that attacked you. All I can do is try to help you. I can't carry you back up while you've got unset broken limbs; and that hand needs tending, if I'm any judge. Please, Kira. Talk to me." He set the light on a wall, opening the medkit. There, splints and emergency casts for triage cases. There was the dermal regenerator, the heat blanket. Odo draped the blanket around her first, setting it to a slow warm. "Please, I need to set that hand before I do anything else."  
"Izzit true?" Kira slurred, "What you w're sayin'?"  
"Yes. It's true. It's just - always seemed to be a bad time to try and tell you." As if handling a newborn, Odo held her broken hand. Most of the bones were aligned. He still had to re-align some of them. "I'm going to have to reset your hand. It will hurt." He winced in sympathy, placing her hand together. Kira only stared. The cast went on easily, without catching on anything. Odo made sure it was snug without restricting her circulation. Scanning the result, he discovered her other broken bones. His hopes fell. "Even after I set your leg - I daren't move you. You've - sustained a lot of damage..." He wanted to weep. He wanted to scream; but he didn't stop his ministrations. The leg was a clean break, easily set in its cast. But he couldn't put a cast on her head, on her fractured skull. All he could do was keep her warm. The blanket wouldn't do that long, here. Slow-voiced, and writhing inside at every word, Odo told her what damage she had.  
"Thought so. Felt wrong."  
"You can't stay warm here, with the blanket only. I'll - have to share my warmth with you."  
If she could have, Kira would've flinched. "If you're Odo; all you'll do is keep me warm. If you're not, you'll strangle me." The unbroken side of her face smiled, "Tha's what I call an acid test..."  
Odo melted again, surrounding her, softly cradling her ruined body, careful of her wounds. He lifted her away fron the chilling metal, nanometer by nanometer, so as not to jar her.  
"Unh! You're hot."  
"No - you're too cold." He replied, "Don't worry, you'll adjust without too much pain; that anesthetic I gave you should be kicking in soon."  
"How can you talk without a mouth?"  
"I deliberately vibrate some of my molecules. It's an old trick." Freed of his one, heavy secret, Odo felt compelled to reveal others. His sense membranes shied away from cold metal, clustering around Nerys instead. Odo began forming a network of hollow chambers in his being, as insulation, and to filter the cold out of the air Kira needed. Then he produced an extension, the image of his normal self, extruded from the rest of his being. "But since you feel comfortable talking to me when I'm humanoid, I'll keep you company like this." He pushed the medkit into Kira's new nest, "And I'll see what I can do about your wounds."  
"'S hot..." Kira complained, "'M burning."  
Odo checked his tricorder, "I know - I'm too hot at the moment. There. The anesthetic's starting to work. Your pain should be fading, now. Am I right?"  
"Yeah; 's goin' now. Fadin' away."  
"Good. I'll fix your jaw. If I can work out what the healing matrix field emitter is..." He consulted a datapadd, picking up various instruments to check the details listed in the instructions. *That* was it. And it's signal boosters. Odo began setting it up. "It'll be at least a quarter of an hour before I can let you eat anything, I'm afraid."  
"Great... 'M starving..." Kira risked a half-smile, "What y' got?"  
"Ration biscuits and water..." Odo appologised, "I'll have to soften the biscuits for you, though."  
"Ration soup? Lovely." Kira winced at the harmonics from the device, "Times like this, I miss hunting Pulaku in the old bases."  
"I promise I'll make up for this - somehow." Odo vowed, "Perhaps - an old-fashioned Pulaku hunt? Followed by an old-fashioned Samatt?"  
Kira laughed, softly, so nothing hurt, "I'll settle for the Samatt, thanks all the same. I'll let you catch your own Pulaku."  
Odo ran the dermal regenerator over her cuts, "Very well, Major."  
"Constable," Kira chided, "You just admitted that you love me, you can at least use my given name."  
"If I did that, you'd have to use mine." Odo breathed deep. This was another weighty secret. Buried under years. "I was originally called Odo'ital. Because - it was what they labled me. What they put on the specimen container I rested in when I was newly found."  
"Odo - Ital..." Kira sighed, "It may be Cardassian f'r 'unknown sample'; but in B'joran, Ita'al means 'pure love'. 'D rath'r you were Ita'al."  
"Thank you, Nerys." Odo ran his fingers over her whole hand, "You have to stay awake, though; sleep at the moment is hazardous. Talk to me."  
Kira focussed on the words. "When I was little, Mama always used to tell me, when I w's afraid 'f the dark, that th' stars were the eyes of the Prophets. That they'd keep me safe fr'm evil while I slept... It w's such a beautiful fairy tale... 'Til I woke up 'n' Mama was screamin' - th' rape gangs got her... then th' Cardassians--" A deep breath, "They kill'd her for screaming."  
"You're - still afraid of the dark?"  
"Mm-hm. When it's cold 'n' dark, I 'memb'r. Mama..." She returned Odo's grasp, "Papa went quiet after that. He didn' wanna eat. Didn' wanna do anything 'xcept kneel wh'r she w's buried..." Tears shed, "I couldn' keep him alive, Ita'al... Tried m' best..."  
"It's all right, Nerys. Things like that - happened to all of us."  
"You nev'r had a Mama." Kira wept, "Or a Papa."  
"No, but I did have a little Bajoran daughter."  
"*What*?"  
"It was up in the Jo'keril mining complex. On my first day, I pulled this little girl - no more than three years old; out of a minor cave-in." He had to keep Nerys' attention, now. "She clung to me like I was her only chance. Her name was Lijah. I carried her over the camp, looking for her parents. No-one seemed to want her, not even the man who claimed to be her genetic father. I took her up to the Gul of the place, asked him what I should do... He said that I dug her out, she was mine. But I wouldn't get any extra rations because of her. Well, you know how little I need - they still rationed me like a Bajoran; so it all went to her. After a day or two, she came out of her silence; told me what an animal her father was. How he'd beat her mother... She used to call me 'Papa Odo', never left my side if she could help it." Now it was his turn to blow a sigh, "No child should be afraid of their parents."  
He told her of Lijah's shy smiles, that quickly turned into eager ones when she discovered Odo wasn't the monster she feared he was. Of her need to be held and softly sang to when she woke up with nightmares, of her complete unwillingness to be left alone, even for a moment. Odo told Nerys of the surprising new sensation he'd encountered, being needed, of being vital to one little girl's life; of being valued.  
Then came the day that Lijah's mother demanded her back. Odo fought to keep custody, arguing that the girl's father was nothing but a brutal thug. Her mother argued that all that had changed, that he was a better man. The Gul settled the matter by forcing Odo to hand Lijah to her mother. He was rostered in different areas, away from where Lijah's parents worked, and was to be kept away from them for a week. It was unnecessary. Returning to the camp one evening, Odo found her body.  
Lijah had been beaten until she died. The sheer ugliness of the act chilled Odo beyond the depths of his core. Why would anyone beat a helpless baby? He was the only one to touch her body with any care after she died; carrying her remains right up to the Gul and demanding justice.  
Said the Gul, "What is justice to the dead? It's just a Bajoran. Bury it and go away."  
Odo asked what the man would do if it was *his* daughter found dead like that. The Cardassian told him. "Good," Odo had said, handing her body into the Gul's confused arms, "Because you won't stop me doing just that." He didn't get as far as the Gul's suggestion; but it did feel good to knock the brute down. Odo imagined that the reciprocal blow would have killed an ordinary Bajoran, but Odo had just let his head dissolve, then used the opportunity to break the man's arm.  
Odo caught Major Kira's gaze. Apparrently that was similar to what the Founder had done to her. "I'm sorry, Nerys. It's - what happened. I was ready to kill the man... then I heard his wife begging me to stop - on behalf of her new child..." he shook his simalcrum of a head, "I let him off with a warning that probably scared the hell out of him... At least their baby got to grow up. I'd never even *considered* killing before. It scared me more than I thought."  
"What you did," Kira said eventually, "was justice. What you were thinking of doing - maybe it was a little Cardassian. Not that some of us didn't do worse... During the Occupation, a lot of insane things happened..."  
"I know," Odo smiled. Then winced. His exterior was slowly freezing.  
"Ita'al? Are you all right?"  
How could he explain without giving her concern? He could not lie to her, either. "It's - cold here. Some of me is - freezing."  
"Prophets... Is there anything I can do? Do you need anything?"  
"I need you to live, Nerys. Stay calm. Doctor Bashir will find us, soon... He'll move us somewhere warm. It's going to be all right." He grasped her good hand, wishing he could hold her like she needed to be held, "You'll see."  
"It better be all right," Kira sighed, "I'm gonna kill you if you die."  
"I'll be fine. It's only a small amount of damage."

Julian Bashir sighed, his breath clouding in the cold. Odo may have told them the *area* in which Major Kira was, but the precise location was another matter. Especially in the Dead Zones. He twitched his anorak hood up and cautiously stepped forward, behind his guide; who also used a tricorder to track Odo's signal.  
"That's odd," Bashir murmured, reconsulting his, "There's something big down in the Labyrinth... it's right near Odo's signal."  
"Hell, it could *be* Odo," muttered the tech-guide, "There's some stairs this way." They detoured past a gaping hole with particularly sharp-looking edges.  
Bashir remembered to watch where he put his feet.

Odo could feel his temperature drop. On one hand, it helped him maintain his shape, but on the other - it was threatening his continued existance. He could feel/hear dull vibrations of footfalls far above. "They're coming."  
"About time," Nerys smiled, "My leg's hurting like fury."  
"You know I daren't give you any more anesthetic," He fed her a little more ration-mush. "Not until you've eaten a proper meal."  
"I'm sorry, Ita'al... I get bitchy when I'm in pain."  
"I undestand perfectly, Nerys," Another pseaudo-spoon-full of mush, "You still need to eat."  
"I'm glad only you can see me like this," Kira grumbled, "Don't think I could stand it if *everyone* saw me weak."  
"I'm afraid Bashir will have to see you."  
"Bashir doesn't count - he's a doctor."  
"Do I count?" Odo wondered, still feeding her.  
"Of course you count, Ita'al," Nerys gentled, "That makes it bad enough for me. If anyone else saw - I'd want to curl up and die."  
"Please don't, Nerys. It'd be - tragic." Damn it - this was starting to hurt... His outer cells were *dying*. _Hurry up, Bashir,_ he mentally begged, _We need you._  
"Ita'al?"  
"Yes, Nerys?"  
"What songs did Lijah like to hear? When she was hurt, or crying."  
Odo launched into a version of _Dear, Green Place_.  
Nerys began to laugh, "I used to love that when I was a child..."

Juian shivered. Time was running out, and the Labyrinth was up to its usual tricks of disorientation and illusion.  
"Do you hear that?"  
"Hear what?" Julian asked, straining his ears.  
"Some lunatic's singing _Dear, Green Place_... Down *here*?"  
"*Two* lunatics, if I'm not mistaken," Juian frowned. "That way - I think I know who it is..." The source of the sound was a lumpish sphere five meters wide. Bashir scanned it - cell structure similar to Odo. "Eureka..."  
His tech-guide shined a light on it. "Doesn't look like them."  
"Odo's encased Major in himself - I don't know whether that's phenominally brilliant or stupid. This outer structure's dead, brittle."  
"Better beam it out, then. Straight to medical?"  
Bashir nodded.  
The tech tapped his comm pin. "Petersen to Ops. Emergency beam to medical for three. Co-ordinates 3 by delta-five-seven, two." He watched the beam-out. "They there?"  
>We got them there, safe and sound.You get out of there safely, too.


End file.
